Saturday, October 25, 2014

1980 Week: The Sea Wolves

Several veterans of the
highly enjoyable military adventure The
Wild Geese (1978)—including director Andrew V. McLaglen, star Roger Moore,
and screenwriter Reginald Rose—reteamed for the offbeat World War II adventure The Sea Wolves. In fact, the original
plan was to reunite all three main stars of The
Wild Geese: Richard Burton, Richard Harris, and Moore. Alas, it wasn’t to
be, so Moore costars in The Sea Wolves
with the considerably older David Niven and Gregory Peck. As it happens, Niven
and Peck are more appropriate casting, notwithstanding Peck being an American, since the story dramatizes a real-life
incident during which a group of retired British cavalry officers were
recruited for an espionage mission against the Nazis. Additionally, Niven and
Peck had collaborated to strong effect in a previous manly-man adventure
picture, 1961’s The Guns of Navarone.

The Sea Wolves has a certain genteel
charm owing to its old-fashioned presentation of Allied heroism and Axis
treachery. However, the absence of the modern tonalities that McLaglen and Rose
utilized so well in The Wild Geese—angsty
antiheroes, twisted international politics—makes The Sea Wolves seem overly tame. The filmmakers’ attempts at
integrating lighthearted comedy into the mix further diminish the life-or-death
gravitas needed to make the derring-do scenes work. At its worst, the movie is flat and forgettable.

Set in India, the picture
begins by showing U-boats sinking British tankers, thus interrupting key Allied
supply lines. British spies determine that information about the tankers is
emanating from a radio transmitter hidden somewhere a port controlled by the
neutral country of Portugal, meaning that no official invasion force can be
sent to dismantle the transmitter. This situation gives rise to the bold idea
of recruiting soldiers from the Calcutta Light Horse, many of whom are retired
and living in India. Eager for another shot at military action, aging enlisted
men train for their mission while the Light Horse’s officers—played by Moore,
Niven, and Peck—conduct espionage in order to learn the exact location of the
transmitter.

Despite the tremendous appeal of the leading actors, The Sea Wolves is bogged down with
predictable plotting and uninspired staging. Furthermore, the chemistry between
the leads never clicks quite the way it did between the stars of The Wild Geese. Moore seems like he’s a
generation apart from his costars, Niven looks bored, and Peck seems frustrated
at playing such a vapid role after getting so much room to stretch in his two
previous films, MacArthur (1977) and The Boys from Brazil (1978). One also
suspects that McLaglen was exhausted after having directed two elaborate
films—the larky ffolkes and the
leaden Breakthrough—in the year prior
to making the equally complex The Sea
Wolves. Whatever the reasons, The Sea
Wolves is watchable but a disappointment nonetheless.